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This building makes me think of the currently popular "Microservices Architecture" and wonder what many of the systems that have adopted it will look like in a

This building makes me think of the currently popular "Microservices Architecture" and wonder what many of the systems that have adopted it will look like in a few years. Particularly, this paragraph: "There are dozens of tiny problems that contributed to its decline, each one of them minutely nudging utopia into the grot of reality. There’s no hot water. The capsules were initially lined with a three-centimeter layer of asbestos for insulation, but within a few years, the toxicity of that substance was a matter of public knowledge and as a result, the large ventilation systems taking up a significant chunk of each living space had to be permanently disabled. Rearranging the capsules turned out to be much more expensive than originally anticipated and very rarely happened. The promise that they could be upgraded or replaced over time was never fulfilled; the original and occasionally very shoddy materials are still in place. (For instance, the paper blinds that once decorated the tower’s portholes have mostly rotted away. Now, some residents paste newspaper to their windows to keep the light out.) But all these swarming problems just feed into the singular, large, incontrovertible one. The idea was beautiful but unworkable; it wasn’t at home in the world."

EdwardCoffin 10y ago
I found that paragraph a bit perplexing: it attributed overall failure to problems due to lack of maintenance. Sure, you fail to maintain something that needs it then it will develop problems. That doesn't indicate a design problem though. The article cites a bunch of such problems, then concludes that they are evidence of an unworkable idea, which doesn't follow. I wonder whether the building could be refurbished, using lessons learned. Replace the asbestos with some other insulation that is non-toxic, and clean the ventilation system. Lack of hot water provided by the infrastructure can be point-of-use hot water heaters. The comment about the rotting window-blinds is just mystifying to me: those have nothing to do with the building itself, any building with similar blinds would be prone to the same problem, either regularly replace them or use something more durable. And with respect to the problems rearranging the capsules, they never specify what problems impeded this activity: perhaps something could be done to alleviate such problems, but it is hard to say in the absence of any concrete information.

EdwardCoffin 10y ago

I found that paragraph a bit perplexing: it attributed overall failure to problems due to lack of maintenance. Sure, you fail to maintain something that needs it then it will develop problems. That doesn't indicate a design problem though. The article cites a bunch of such problems, then concludes that they are evidence of an unworkable idea, which doesn't follow. I wonder whether the building could be refurbished, using lessons learned. Replace the asbestos with some other insulation that is non-toxic, and clean the ventilation system. Lack of hot water provided by the infrastructure can be point-of-use hot water heaters. The comment about the rotting window-blinds is just mystifying to me: those have nothing to do with the building itself, any building with similar blinds would be prone to the same problem, either regularly replace them or use something more durable. And with respect to the problems rearranging the capsules, they never specify what problems impeded this activity: perhaps something could be done to alleviate such problems, but it is hard to say in the absence of any concrete information.